001Thank you, Mr. President and Dr. Holden. Tonight is the first budget hearing for the proposed budget for fiscal year 2026. And as required by the state department, we have to have two budget hearings. So, our second one is on September the 11th. I do I do appreciate the lateness of the August budget hearing, but I will tell you that uh maybe next year we not plan it the same week of payroll. So that that's kind of been a challenge for me today. But so the purpose of the presentation is to aid in the communication of our financial information to the public and to obtain input into the budget process in order to develop a tool to make sure that we are using our funds to benefit our students and our staff. The proposed budget presented
002tonight is for fiscal year October 1st, 2025 through September the 30th of 2026. During the budget presentation, we try to keep the mission statement in mind as we are trying to um prepare that budget. And Dr. Holden's already mentioned it takes a village to develop this budget. It's not all me. It's my ladies upstairs and payroll and in accounting it's the principles and their bookkeepers and it's the administrators. So without them I could not do budget. So I I thank them. I I don't think I could thank them enough. So and some of the administrators have actually communicated out at the schools on my behalf so that they can bring that information back so we can make sure that we get the right tools in the hands of our students and our staff. And as
003you can see, I always give you a massive budget packet. It's about 90 pages long. And I am not going through every page. Been there, done that. I don't like doing it. But these are documents that we are required by the state department to provide you in a public setting. And within your packet, you have a glossery of terms. We will go over the anticipated revenues for fiscal year 26 that include the statement, state funds, federal funds, and local funds. There are P exhibits in your packet. I believe they're on page 21 and 22. That gives you a detail of what revenues are currently budgeted for this proposed budget and the expenditures as well. You also have in your packet the salary schedules that were approved in July and August and you have the supplemental
004schedule that was approved as well. Finally, in the back of the packet, there is a response to review for you or anybody in the audience can fill that out if they have any comments to make about the proposed budget that I present to tonight or any recommendations that they have. And the budget is due to the state department by September the 15th of 2025. That's why we're having our last one on the 11th. But before we get started, I always like to give you some general information. So, this this chart will provide you with the number of full-time staff that we have. Currently, we have 337 employees on staff. I do have budgeted 338. I have an administrator that has been begging for one more person for about six months now. So, there is one
005more pres person budgeted in the budget. Our enrollment, the 20-day count last year was 2,961. But keep in mind that the 114 students at the early learning center do not count towards our funding. So back those out. And we were funded on 2,847 students. And my count as of Friday was 2,82 when you take out those early learning center, but it could have changed today. That number changes every time we look at it. But the number that counts is going to be that 20-day count after Labor Day as long as they have the foundation program. Of our 337 cert employees, we have 174 that are certified and they provide us with 15 years of average teaching experience and 75% of I said 174 certified employees, but I apologize. 74 of our employees have a master's
006or higher and that's 75% of our certified staff says a lot about uh the caliber that we are requiring to teach our students here at muscle shows and as I mentioned a while ago our enrollment does appear to be down but it's very fluid every time we look at it but as of Friday it was down 44 students hopefully >> I'll say this studentsville students are at the secondary level we're really proud of them. >> This is a comparison of our certified personnel. But on this chart, the most important thing to me is that red line at the bottom. We have 20 and a half employees that we are funding locally. And when I say locally, it's the board general fund that is paying for those units. Those are units that are above and beyond
007what the state has allocated to our school system. But we have 231 certified employees as compared to 230 last year. And then the foundation funded us for 188 and a half certified. And we have other state allocations that were funding 14 and a half. And then 5.36 are funding our federal. Those are typically your special education personnel. This slide just shows the trend of our enrollment. You can see we dipped really low in 2022, but we're kind of creeping back up to where we were in 2019. Actually, we're exceeding a little bit from 2019. But I I like to show you this because as our enrollment goes down, our teacher units go down and our funding goes down. So we want to kind of keep it going up. We do have some control over our
008enrollment right now with some of the out of district, but as we continue to have in district students come in, that out of district number is going down. And I checked with Dr. Connor this afternoon, we currently have 303 students that are out of district and that is comparing it to 329. So that just kind of gives you an idea of how our our in district student growth is currently. Okay. There are two types of funds that I'm going to cover today. Governmental and fidiciary. Governmental consists of the general, which is our primary operating fund account. Special revenue, which is your federal revenues, and they are more restricted than our general fund. Debt services, that's where you will find our long-term debt. capital projects. It is what it is. Renovations and constructions and acquiring new
009property. Uh this is where you would have um where we would budget our new schools if that ever happens. We hope it does. And fidiciary accounts, these funds are held by the system as a trustee or an agent. You will typically find those out at the schools with your local school accounts, your non-public and public accounts, and then also our payroll account. in your packet is on page 21 and 22. It's those P exhibits I was referring to. That provides your you the proposed revenues and expenditures for fiscal year 26. I am proposing that the revenue for 26 will be in approximately $44 million with 53% being generated from state funds 36 from local and 8% from federal and the remaining 3% is other and that's typically from transfers of monies from the local school
010back to the central office federal indirect cost and CMP pass through the state funds we get th the state and the federal funds we get those from the state department, but your local funds are your tax revenues. Foundation program um is our main funding mechanism as of now. Uh it is the K12 education funding and it is determined by the 20-day count after Labor Day. So, as you can see, uh, fiscal year 26 enrollment was 2847. That was driven by the September 24 number. I always have to think about the years because there's just so many years involved here. So, 24 numbers are funding the 26 actual data. So, we are required to have a 10 mil match uh to set aside in order to receive our state foundation money. And uh it's I don't
011know if we all know what a tax rate is, but I'm gonna go ahead and say it anyway for for the kids out here that may not know. So our ambassadors for a millage rate is a tax rate that's used to collect money's own local property tax. So that represents an amount per every,000 of property assessed value. So for muscle shows, one meal is $349,800487 and our 10 meal is 3,494,870. That equates to about 36 teaching units. So you can imagine if we ever lose that 10 mill, which we can't lose the 10 mil because it's a state requirement, but if we did lose 10 meals, that would be detrimental to our budget. We are also required to have a local match for our capital purchases and that about is 129,692. I'm going to sit
012on this for a little bit longer because it's new. Uh the legislature did pass the renewing Alabama's investment in student education act 2025-254 and the purpose is to address the needs of specific student population with the public K12 schools and they established a process in order to provide additional funding above the foundation program using an a weight uh for the different categories of students. While it is supposed to be additional monies for the foundation, it does replace some of the historical amounts that we've received in the past like at risk gifted and the English language learners the the state allocations. They utilize the October 2024 state student the student data collected to fund based on the weighted allocation and they established various categories and percentage multipliers in order to fund the different school districts. Muscle
013shows did qualify for four out of the five categories. The first being the poverty allocation. We received $171,845. Last year's state allocation for at risk, they're calling it poverty now, but state allocation at risk was 56,690. And then we had the opportunity to apply for a grant that's known as the atrisisk high hope grant where we used to uh we used those funds to purchase a lot of software and we received 43,789. Both of those funds were removed, but even with those, we received additional monies of $71,366. They are using students that are reported in the direct in order to fund these students with a weighted of a weight of 2.25%. And then the English language learners allocation from last year, we received $24,690. So, we did receive additional funding of of $5,500. Um, I've
014really said that wrong. $43,988 and they're using a weight of 7%. Our gifted is the one where we received $5,581 additional dollars. That was also included in the ETF foundation monies and it has been removed and replaced with the raise act. And then the special education we received 157,883. This is additional money um above and beyond the foundation because they did not have just a specific category for the special education. And they have three different tiers. It's tier one, tier two, and tier three. I wish Dr. Chton was here. He could probably give you a little bit more information on the different tiers, but they all have their own different weight. And those students are um funded based on the reported ex exceptionalities. It's a difficult word for me to say. Sorry. >> He's actually
015at a meeting right now. I think in in Opaikica, he had sent Sherry and me some some notes that he he took from one of the presentations. But I'll just say this about that. If you'll remember when the legislative session started last year, they were talking about completely scrapping the whole way education is funded in this state. and um that information, you know, got out about the winners and the losers. And you know, we were kind of on that list of if the if the proposal went through, we might be on the list of the biggest losers. There was a lot of controversy about that. And y'all remember Representative Ke was here that night and he talked a little bit about it in this room, but this is what they settled on. I'm sorry. Exactly.
016Well, and and the original proposal, it it never gained enough steam to pass, which we're glad of that because it it did look like if you and that that uh document that AASB released, I mean, was was their numbers. They were using their numbers to do that calculation. So, there was a lot of questions about whether it was correct or not, but at the in the end, they did not scrap the whole funding mechanism and they came up with this. And you know, this is something I think most people can live with because we did end up getting more, which is which is what we like to see. And the other thing I like about it, there's a lot of flexibility to it. Um, you know, we can even though they there are allocations here
017like she talked about, uh, if we, you know, suddenly had a greater need in one area over the other, there is some flexibility we have to move money around if we need to and make that decision at the local level, which is, you know, makes a lot of sense. and we have to send in a waiver for that if we decide right now in each u in tier one and tier two we are funding an individual out of those tier three after discussing it with Dr. Templeton, we decided that it would be best to put it all towards professional services like OTPT, speech because most of your tier three need those services. So, we just budgeted it all. So, each C category has a different amount allocated. So, that's how we were able to divide
018those amounts out. And Dr. Holden did mention ENT. I I'm not including that in my budget tonight because it's actually carryover money. I will present that probably in either budget hearing two or when we do our budget amendment around January. The ENT money was about $3 million that we received in fiscal year 25 that we have to have spent by September 30th of 26. So hopefully we will get that amount close to that amount again, but that I will let y'all know when we do a budget amendment when we get that money. So hopefully we'll get it. The next round of funds is our federal programs. We currently have received allocations for these federal programs, your IDA, IDA, preschool, career tech, title one, title three, and child nutrition. Um, Miss Stone does that budget for
019me. She looks at her projected revenue or she looks at her current revenues and projects what we will bring in next year. We are still considered a C school district. I think we are in year two on that. I think >> the years have gone really fast for me, but we we are still in that program. So, uh she has looked at those numbers and provided me with her projections and we've come up with her her revenue being $2.2 million. I will say I'm anxiously awaiting the title two and the title four allocations that have yet to be released. As you may or may not be aware, those funds were part of the federal freeze with President Trump's administration. They they did unfreeze those funds, but we've not seen those allocations yet. Title two is
020our main funding mechanism for professional development. uh we we pour just about I would say 90% of the budget into professional development districtwide. So if that is pulled then that's going to be a big hit on our on our general fund to provide those services. Moving on to our local revenues as I mentioned they are made up of our avalorum and sales tax. And here I've broken down our Avalorum. We have 20 meals of taxes and I'm projecting that we will receive $7.8 million if our economy in Muscle shows continues to grow as it has in the past. Other local revenues and additional taxes and appropriations. The county sales tax that includes $50,000 from our county commission allocation. Uh they passed a resolution a couple years ago that they would provide us $50,000 as long
021as we used it for security. So we are using that to pay for our amazing SRO's out in the schools partially. ENT is paying for the rest of it. So, we continue to receive about 300,000 more in the city council appropriations since they passed their resolution in 2022 to send us about a to send us 8% of the sales tax and SSUT tax. So, uh that's been a a great improvement for the school system. So, I have projected that we will continue to receive almost $1.8 million in the CD. There was an article today in the Times Daily about the SSUT. If you didn't read that, I would encourage you to go do that, just stay on top of that topic because that is going to be a hot one in the next year or
022so. The article was about the county commission, not just our county commission, but the statewide county commission association. Their position obviously is to oppose any changes to that. But, you know, it makes sense that the people who benefit the most from it are going to oppose changes. But there is a lawsuit that's been filed. Tuscaloosa, the city of Tuscaloosa and the school systems in and around that area are filing a lawsuit to try to get the structure of SSUT and how that's allocated to be changed. Um, you know, right now, you know, that that there's a lot of talk about that and there will be an opportunity, I think, at some point for us to make a decision as to whether we join that law. So, you know, obviously we would have to look at
023it, look at the terms of it, whether we would benefit from the outcome of it and that sort of thing. So, I'm just saying that's a possibility, but it has been mentioned among the superintendent association may hear that in your your groups and your circles as well. >> I think there's mention in my organization as well as because they are about to start a survey among all the CSFOs. Every year we have a questionnaire come out asking if we've what amount of SSUT we receive from our city or our county commission and I think now they have actually hired an outside consultant to call and do surveys with the school district. So I or Dr. Holden may get those calls. So >> and the 50,000 that she's talking about there at the bottom we've just
024received that. This is maybe the third year. >> Yes. >> From our county commission. you know, we had a lot of conversations with them about, hey, share the love and they they did and we're appreciative of that amount. But, you know, when you look at how much that that funding source grows year over year over year, they're seeing 10% growth year over year over year. And, you know, until three years ago, we weren't getting any of it. These are these are online purchases that are not being made in brickandmortar stores, which we get a dedicated allocation. When somebody buys something in a store, we get a percentage of that. If they buy it online, we don't get a percentage of that unless our city and county decide to be, you know, friendly to us and
025give us a little bit. So, we do appreciate the 50,000. It is being used for security, but obviously we think that it it's it's still not a fair structure uh when you look at how much we receive from brick and mortar purchase. And the same with the city. I mean the the allocation that says city council appropriation you know that was 1.2 million for about 30 years and because this mayor council decided to change the structure we are getting some SSUT from the city but there again it's still not the same amount that we receive when people buy things in person and in stores. >> The next two slides are your pay exhibits that I keep talking about on page 21 and 22. So, but they will they do give you the breakdown. Not sure
026what happened to the alignment on the right hand side, but I noticed that earlier and couldn't get that corrected. But, um, it doesn't change any of the information. But, the first page here is your revenues and the next page is it starts your expenditures down below that that top green line. Moving on into the expenditures, I projected that all expenditures over all funding sources is estimated to be $47 million. Again, that is um pending any additional fundings that we may have coming through as far as title 2, title 4, and maybe even some additional state allocations. But you'll see that 48% of the total budget is geared towards instructional services and another 15 toward instructional support. Both of those lines can be anything from teacher salary and benefits to software to classroom supplies. So it's
027it's not just salary and benefits, but it does make up 63%. Instructional instruction makes up 63% of our total budget. focusing on just the general fund expenditures. The general fund makes up 80% of our overall budget. When I talk about the general fund, that is not the board general fund, which can sometimes be confusing. It is your state allocations, the foundation unit, your local taxes that are included in that as well. And total 38 $37 million is being projected with 71% going towards instructional services and support. So 71 of just the general fund budget is going towards instruction. That just leaves 12% for operation and m maintenance, 5% for administration, and 12% to cover our transportation, CMP, debt service, capital outlay, and other expenditures. So, doesn't leave a whole lot to do the things to
028maintain the district. So, anytime we can get additional monies like the ENT money, that that helps. That gives us a good little shot in the arm. Total personnel cost across the the budget is 78 or 77% that is down 1% from last year and that is contributed to that we had some very experienced personnel leave us this year I believe Dr. Holden we had what 40 plus people leave and then not to mention all the people that were the moving parts. So u so 77% makes up the overall budget. And our debt service we have four different types of debt service. We have our warrant bond issue of 2020 which we reissued in 2013. That principal issue was $8.3 million and the payment for 2026 is $621,000. We have levied our countywide some of our
029countywide sales tax to pay make the payments on this and your maturity date for these for this bond is June of 2038 and you currently have an interest rate of 3%. That is great right now. And then the warrant bond issue of 23 we issued it in 2023 January and our principal issue was 5.19 million. We initially used those funds for well we thought we were going to do HVAC across the district but we ended up being able to do two and we used the rest of the funds to pay for the churches that we purchased. So and we are beginning to pay our principal. The last two three years we paid interest only. So our payment this year is $222,000. Again we have le levied countywide sales sales tax. Maturity date is in 2042
030and the interest rate fluctuates from 3% to 4.1 by the end of the the term of the issue. You have your first metro loan uh that we also use that to we actually purchased the OSR prek with this U and we have a principal payment on that of 43,000. interest is 22,000 and it has a maturity date of 2041, but we can pay this one off at any time without any kind of penalties. And we can reissue any of the debts if we choose to do so without any penalties. Of course, I would not do that unless the interest rates are lower than what they are now, but and then finally, we had the QAB that was issued in 2009. And I'm happy to say that our last payment is December the 15th of 2025
031on this. So that should free up about $117,000 for our capital plan, our capital project monies. They hold about 86,000 of our capital money to pay the principal and then we just turn around and pay the interest every year. So we'll make an interest payment on December the 15th of the 7740 and then in 27 we should see additional monies in our capital unless we decide to levy and do another QAB bond. So that's a discussion for a later date. And then you have a B exhibit. This is another form that we are required to provide to you. So it gives you a summary of your revenues and expenditures. And you can find that on page 71 of your budget packet. And just a few budget facts just to recap everything I've talked about. Total
032revenues are projected to be $45 million. I do have $8.6 million in unreserved funds that are currently budgeted. That so that gives you total revenue source of $54 million. Of that 8.6 I have I do have the ENT considered in that. I just don't have it budgeted out just yet. And then for your expenditures an estimated 48 million. Your current fund balance is 4.78 months and the fund balance as of October 1st of 24 was $11 million. I'm projecting that in 26 your one month operating balance will be 3.2. So our payroll to give you an idea of what that looks like, our payroll is anywhere from 2.1 to $2.6 million a month. And then projected reserve fund balance is 3.54. And then the last bullet there, Dr. Holden and I have been in discussion
033about a one-time supplemental pay, but there's a lot of things that are kind of laying out there, I guess, to keep us from securing the funds right now because we have we do have the title two money that we're uncertain of. That's usually u that is usually about 200,000. So if we have to eat that cost for professional development that could affect uh being able to do that as well as title four that's funds that we use for our e students and any other allocations that uh we may not be awarded that we were awarded in FY25. But we we are going to continue talking about that and we want to make sure that it does not affect our bottom line. I've always had a rule of thumb that I want to maintain a three-month
034operating balance because I'm not really from the old school. I came in to the education world right after they decided to lower the operating balance to one month, but it did used to be three months and I think it's a good idea to maintain a three-month. So, and as you see, uh I'm projected a 3.5. So, Um, but we'll be in talks about that a little bit more and once we finalize the budget, we'll we'll see where we where we stand as far as our operating balance and keep you updated on that. Would you like to add anything, Dr. Holden, on that? >> Great. >> Okay. And I do have to provide financial accountability to let the public know that we do have annual audits that are conducted by an independent CPA firm. I provide
035the board of education with financials and our expenditures so that they are able to review and approve each month. And our financial statements and the check register, a summary check register is available on our school system website. And in December, we provide annual accountability reports that are available to the public online or you're welcome to come to the central office and review those documents. And finally, as I mentioned, in the back of the packet, there is a response to review. Uh, if you did not pick up a packet or if there if I think there's a few left, but there is one in the back of the packet. If you want to fill that out, you're welcome to and send that to myself or to Dr. Holden. And also, if I could ask you to
036sign the signin sheet that lets the state department know that we did hold a public hearing and it's our first public hearing. And again, our second one will be September the 11th, 2025 at our uh regular schedule board meeting. Are there any questions, comments? >> Obviously, if you do have a question, we, you know, we will uh try to address that with you uh very quickly. We'll also address it at the next hearing. So, you're welcome to come back uh if you want to see that. It could be that some of this changes, you know, as Sherry's going to continue to work on the budget. It's not finished obviously and that's why there are some things like she said still hanging out there as far as monies that we're expecting to get. We haven't gotten
037yet. Um we just want to make sure that our reserve is in a healthy place in order for us to make some of the decisions that we're going to make. Uh like like she said with the one-time supplemental if that's if that's if that's possible. Um you know we did like she said you know we don't really have less staff this year than we did last year. we just have less experienced staff and uh that that you know means that our payroll did drop and of course we had several full-time positions that we did not fill that we now have part-time people contract people filling. So that's that's really put us in a position to where we might be able to consider that uh for our employees. So we're excited about that but we just
038want to be cautious. We want to proceed with caution before we uh jump out there. But I think we'll have a decision on that by the September the 11th meeting.